City of York Council receives over £120,000 from eCrime team

Under the current agreement, City of York Council retains 25 per cent of funds recovered by Scambusters and the eCrime team through the Proceeds Of Crime Act (POCA), with 50 per cent going to National Trading Standards Board, and the remainder going to the regional trading standards group which assisted.

Since April 2014, the council has received £129,000 from POCA hearings, while another £15m of assets have so far been frozen by Scambusters for ongoing and future investigations.

At a meeting on Monday, the executive member culture, leisure and tourism committee met to approve an updated enforcement policy for investigations carried out by Scambusters, and Colin Rumford, head of regional investigations at the council, revealed more about the results of some operations.

Between April 2014 and August 2016, prosecutions brought about by Scambusters have led to criminals being ordered to pay compensation to victims totalling £83,508, and 11 offenders have been imprisoned for their role in scams.

The offences included bogus online recruitment and CRB checks, online airline ticket scams, and Operation Belle - a council tax rebranding scam which led to more than 1,600 complaints being filed to the council after little or no work was carried out, with the fraud valued at £250,000.

Mr Rumford said: “Three defendants were prosecuted, and the suggestion is most of it went on drugs and spent on illegal means, so there were no realisable assets we could recover.

"This was our biggest problem.”

The group currently has trials set in courts around North and West Yorkshire as far ahead as March 2018.

As well as looking back at previous cases, the council approved an updated policy for the organisation which stated “the purpose of Scambusters is not to provide advice, information or carry out inspections of regulated businesses”, its purpose instead is to take on major investigations through the criminal and civil court